Robot stars in Gardner-filmed commercial

Thursday

Dec 19, 2013 at 6:00 AMDec 19, 2013 at 1:34 PM

By George Barnes TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

GARDNER — Roads were shut down Wednesday morning in the city's downtown area, police in tactical gear were gathering around cruisers parked near City Hall and a robotic ET was wandering down Connors Street.

It was almost surreal and a strange sight in the normally staid downtown area of the Chair City. Was it an attack? Maybe a drug bust?

None of the above. It was much more exciting. A local robotics company was filming a commercial in Gardner.

The Bedford-based iRobot took over a section of Connors Street near City Hall Avenue for much of the day, filming a commercial as part of its "iRobot. Do you?" campaign.

Unlike the filming in the city of the movie "School Ties" in 1996, there were no big name stars in town, unless you count PackBot.

PackBot is designed to assist in the most dangerous situations, including bomb disposal. Unlike the company's floor-cleaning Roomba, floor-washing Scooba, floor-mopping Braava, pool-cleaning Mirra and gutter-cleaning Looj, PackBot is designed with the military and police in mind.

"This was the robot that helped in the Boston Marathon bombing search," said Nancy Smith, iRobot vice president of marketing and communications.

The robot has video capability and arms capable of grabbing and moving things. It is run with a joystick and video feed comes into a laptop.

The scenario for the commercial was a bomb found at the bus stop at the corner of Connors Street and City Hall Avenue. The road was blocked off from City Hall Avenue to the entrance of the parking lot behind City Hall. Also blocked off was the section of Connors Street from City Hall Avenue to Parker Street.

The PackBot is designed to approach potential bombs and render them safe, guided by a controller standing at a safe distance

"This robot keeps people out of harm's way," said Karen Jasmin, director of global marketing and communications for iRobot's Home Robot Division.

The commercial will air in 60 countries, although most who see it will not realize it was done in Gardner. That was the point.

Ms. Smith said Gardner was chosen because it has an everytown USA look to it. The buildings in the background would seem familiar people in many communities. iRobot is a Massachusetts company and was looking to film locally.

"Gardner was just easy to work with," Ms. Smith said.

The city went out of its way to allow the street to be shut down and assigned police to make sure the sections of road were shut off.

This is not the first time iRobot has filmed in Gardner, but this was the most public place. It twice filmed commercials in the former S. Bent Bros. factory complex, which is owned by the city.

Although it snowed twice this week, including Tuesday night, Ms. Smith said filming went along briskly, keeping to schedules. The snow was cleared way first thing in the morning and Ms. Smith said the clean, white new snow actually helped in covering up the older dirtied snow from the previous storm.

"It's been great," she said. "We're right on schedule."

Contact George Barnes at george.barnes@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @georgebarnesTG